Falmouth (UK), June 2011 - A free online ten-unit screenwriting course from University College Falmouth's MA Professional Writing is now viral on the internet. The video and audio lectures, along with accompanying course materials, are being featured, shared, re-published, and discussed by screenwriters and filmmakers around the globe.
The respected filmmakers' website filmmakeriq.com and Celtx, the world's first all-in-one media pre-production system, featured the free course in their respective blogs. Their Tweets about the course resulted in a flurry of re-tweets and postings to Facebook, Digg, and other leading social networks.
The result of these features was 1,000 people a day accessing the course. That number has since risen to 1,700 a day as the social-network users continue to spread the word. The momentum shows no early signs of slowing down. Users accessing the course have primarily come from The US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Lecturer Alex di Savoia, openSpace Project Manager, says, "This is the tangible benefit of open education. The online comments from filmmakers and scriptwriters of all levels have been overwhelmingly positive. It shows there's a real need for, and interest in, the subject matter. We're pleased we've produced and published a free resource that's having a positive impact in the film making community."
The course, released freely online under a Creative Commons license, is part of the worldwide open-education movement. The full course is hosted on University College Falmouth's open-education repository openSpace, a project that was funded by The Higher Education Academy and managed by JISC.
